Which Year Did You Start Using Social Media & Which One?

This morning I just sit and think about interacting with friends and family across long distances has been a concern of humans for centuries.

Humans have always relied on communication to strengthen their relationships, when face-to-face discussions are impossible or inconvenient.

The first recognizable social media site, Six Degrees, was created in 1997. It enabled users to upload a profile and make friends with other users.

Years later, social media began to explode in popularity. Sites like MySpace and LinkedIn gained prominence in the early 2000s, and sites like Photobucket and Flickr facilitated online photo sharing.

YouTube came out in 2005, creating an entirely new way for people to communicate and share with each other across great distances.

By 2006, Facebook and Twitter both became available to users throughout the world. Other sites like Tumblr, Spotify, Foursquare and Pinterest began popping up to fill specific social networking niches.

Today, there is a tremendous variety of social networking sites, and many of them can be linked to allow cross-posting. This creates an environment where users can reach the maximum number of people without sacrificing the intimacy of person-to-person communication.

So the question now is,

Which Year Did You Start Using Social Media & Which One?